Subterranean restoration: trust issues

Subterranean Restoration is beginning to worry me. We weren’t really off with a good start, with the whole ‘enterprise’ setup and the veiled threats to the DRC, but what really gets on my nerves is the apparent contempt for the explorers.

Cormac openly said that explorers are allowed to visit ‘their’ dig sites but ‘at their own risk’, as if they had some kind of authority in the Cavern; then they hired the GoI, or at least part of them, as ‘security guards’ of sorts; and now it seems that, because of the recent lootings and the chance of ‘clambering explorers’ (Kingsley is surely clambering on his own words, and should leave the PR to someone else), they are restricting Nexus access to ‘their’ D’ni art museum in the City proper only to those who intend to participate in their contests… whoops, restoration projects.
They say they won’t stop us from visiting the museum if we go there with our own transport, but considering that there is no public transport to the city, that the area itself is severely damaged, and that they’re willingly not sharing the location of the place, they pretty much covered all the bases and telling us to get shafted.

But that means that security cannot be the real reason they’re limiting access: Nexus invites are inherently more secure than free access by foot, as they have a name tag attached, can be instantly revoked, are logged in the lattice and cannot be shared.
Kingsley made it clear with his line about clambering explorers: they don’t want us around because we’re just explorers, and they’re the pros. They want our help in exchange for breadcrumbs. Want to see the art museum? Then restore a design for us, or work for us. You’re just an art student, or a researcher? Too bad then. You get to wait until we say it’s safe. The DRC at least is fair and makes everyone wait the same way, without favouritism.

So I say: I hope to be proved wrong in the future, but for now, I’d advise you to keep an eye on SubRes and their associates. They might not be so explorer-friendly as they’d like to sell us.

6 Responses

Tish Reilly

I don’t want to help. I don’t trust you, Clarke, and I don’t trust your organization, and I want to be up front about that from the outset. My trust issues stem from the fact that I don’t have any idea how you (any of you, not just you personally, Clarke) got access to an area to which I cannot go, how you got rights to what has been and might be found there, and so on. It appears to me that you have just come from nowhere, set yourselves up as having some kind of authority, and started handing out little projects to get people on your side. I may not agree with all the DRC has said and done (or left unsaid and undone), but at least I understand WHO they are and HOW they came to be. When I attempted to question you, first someone else told me that “everything you need to know should be on the website.” Who are you to decide what I need to know? When I pressed YOU for an answer, you condescendingly told me to “Have a nice day.”

Furthermore, why should we have to sue to you for access to property that belongs to every explorer? I don’t like the idea that “I can’t get in unless Iwork with you” any more than Ian did. I am an explorer, and the day I decided that, I knew there were certain risks involved, and it should be obvious I was at peace with them. Your “escort” smacks of “chaperone,” and at 61, I am certainly responible for myself.

Quote: “Just ask her not to let Kingsley know. He’s not a big fan of letting people who won’t do stuff for the group in. Slippery slope kind of thing. Let one in and everyone else wants in to. Suddenly you have five thousand people spray-painting “LOL” on tapestries. ;)”

THIS is positively insulting. Of course everyone wants to be there, and absolutely no one is going to deface a D’ni treasure. There may be some who try to make off with it, but destroy it, I seriously doubt it. Those who have come to the Cavern love D’ni culture. I, therefore, want the right of every explorer to go where he wants. I have ZERO interest in acquiring, restoring, translating, or otherwise messing about with the artefacts. They should be left alone anyway. I just cannot accept your (high-handed) appropriation of an area of the city and its contents.

Hmm, not sure if you’ll be able to get an invite. At least not without a guide. Denic just sent out a mailing to all of us. No one’s to get invites to the art museum or the neighborhood unless doing restoration work. I’ll take it up with him. Ava might still have one sent out if she can get an escort for you.

I think I have a little more faith in the average explorer, as I think that the looters and vandals are only a handful, and most of us are pretty capable of behaving in the appropriate manner for the place. Unfortunately, a single vandal is enough to do irreparable damage.

Not joining your group is a matter of honesty. I could volunteer for restorations, visit the museum, and then never be available or never have time for any real work; that wouldn’t be fair of you, as you’d be wasting resources trying to contact me or finding substitutes for the work I’d be supposed to do.

Hmm… Yes, I think that was Ava. She was saying that because of issues others had brought up with whether we can do this legally and we think, legally, we can.

Odd that stability wasn’t mentioned. I’ll have to let the others know about that. We’re all a bit flustered by some recent internal events so we’re not as organized as we hoped to be.

I think there shouldn’t be a problem with giving you the link even if you don’t want to work on a project. Being able to help IS the price tag for joining the team as well as becoming a volunteer (otherwise there’s not much point in joining, is there?). But it isn’t required, at least to my knowledge, for you just to come by. We just don’t want that sort of thing getting out, otherwise poor Olivia would be swamped with every man woman and child here wanting to go there.

If you want to get an invite, the person your should talk to is Ava. As you can imagine, there’s a few issues outside of the cavern to deal with, if you catch my meaning.

Just ask her not to let Kingsley know. He’s not a big fan of letting people who won’t do stuff for the group in. Slippery slope kind of thing. Let one in and everyone else wants in to. Suddenly you have five thousand people spray-painting “LOL” on tapestries. 😉

The DRC thing is from their forums, where one of yours said you’d be ready to dispute in court the DRC’s claims on the Cavern if necessary; being your second or third post there as SR, it just felt to me like a bad opening.

As for the stability, that wasn’t mentioned as an issue until after I wrote this post. Personally, I accept more easily a ‘you can’t get in because it might fall on your head’ rather than a ‘you can’t get in unless you work with us’.

As I said to Ms. Cormac in a private conversation, I don’t currently have the time nor the desire to help another restoration group; my current Cavern groups and out of Cavern activities take up all of my time already. I just wanted access to that museum/building, even one time only, just to take some reportage photographs and documentation about the artworks. If the price tag is to restore a D’ni design for one of your projects then I’m very sorry, but I can’t do that right now and, even if I did, I would probably submit the finished work to the DRC.

Hey there. Obviously some things haven’t been communicated properly. We are in no way threatening the DRC. In fact we want to work with them as much as possible because of our limited resources.

I don’t think Vincent dislikes other explorers. He’s just a bit more direct than he should be. The museum (or building, we’re not exactly certain it’s a museum. That’s just our best guess) has several floors and multiple wings. Some appear to be donated purely to individual age artifacts. There’s just such a huge space that, along with the danger of collapse, it would be far too easy for someone to walk in and grab something and link/walk out with no one knowing.

We don’t even want to try and own the cavern. There’s too much stuff here. We’re swamped with just one building and have no one to my knowledge involved in restoration of structures.

As for Nexus invites… I’ll be honest with you, the way we’re getting the Nexus invites is not probably what the DRC want. However, Kennicot doesn’t really seem interested in that.

You’ve gotten a bad view of SR, and I don’t know where. We want anyone. Art student, researcher, translator, popcorn vendor. So long as you want to help. If you want to, I can get Olivia to send out an invite for you.